Lost lives of pioneer African American police officers have been recovered through unlikely sources, including pardons, political clubs, business records, and anti-lynching societies. A primer on finding that elusive ancestor!

Margaret R. Sullivan is Records Manager & Archivist to the Boston Police Department. She has conducted independent research on forgotten line of duty deaths and Boston's first women, African American, and Jewish officers. A Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society and former Vice-President of TIARA, Margaret has been researching her own Irish ancestors for 20 years, She is currently working with UMass Boston Archives and a group of volunteer genealogists to document the later lives of the police officers in the 1919 Boston Police Strike before the centenary in September, 2019.